Kasia Anderson is an assistant editor at Truthdig. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1997 with a degree in English literature and sociology, she worked as a Web journalist in San Francisco until 2000, when she swapped coasts to write for the New York Daily News as an entertainment reporter. She has also written freelance pieces for Salon.com and the Orlando Sentinel, among other publications. In 2003, she returned to California to attend USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, from which she has earned her Master’s degree and is currently working toward her Ph.D. with a dissertation about celebrity and politics.

As is always the case when catastrophic outbursts can be in any way linked to entertainment and mass culture, some critics have zoomed in on Hollywood as a fomenting agent for grandiose and antisocial delusions that wind their way into volatile minds like Elliot Rodger’s—and everyone else’s, for that matter.

The president and board of trustees at Pasadena City College thrust their school into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons recently with a political and public relations debacle involving PCC alumnus and Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

The collaboration between director Oliver Stone and one-man political think tank Tariq Ali began not three years ago, but their mind-meld has already produced three projects spanning multiple continents and eras. Stone gave a talk in Los Angeles last weekend … (more)

Susan Sarandon is known for rousing the rabble, both onscreen and off, and she has infused her public persona with her politics in a way that has made her a celebrity spokeswoman for a certain brand of lefty sensibility and a lightning rod for the right. She does give the impression ... (more)